Safe at Sea
by naggingGargoyle
Summary: Quinn the human pirate finds herself stranded alone on a rock with a flesh-eating siren. And then they talk. [For Faberry Week day 4: age difference]
1. Chapter 1

******AN: **I really like mermaids! I think fishpeople as a rule are pretty cool + spooky. This story isn't actually about mermaids though. Anyway, here are two short online comics about mermaids that you should read immediately: _how to be a mermaid_ by Maya Kern and _The Prince and the Sea_ by Emily Carroll. (Blood + death warning for both of them.)

**Warning **for slurs, blood and cannibalism.

* * *

Quinn was peacefully picking her toenails on the upper deck when she heard Santana start cursing very loudly. Which, in itself, wasn't any more noteworthy than the sun rising at dawn; but this time, the reason for it was definitely rather unusual.

"Fuck! Fuck fuck fucking _fuck_! It's a siren!" Santana shouted, stomping her boots for probably no other reason than dramatic effect. "I knew we should have brought Kurt along. Britt, my love; Quinn, you ugly dyke, get over here! We've got a siren!"

"Great," Quinn groused, making her way over to her captain as slowly as she could. "First we run out of bacon, now this."

Santana was already gripping the sailing line, one foot planted on a conveniently placed crate. "Britt, you should take the wheel," she said. "Your bisexuality is our only chance."

Quinn rolled her eyes. "This is ridiculous. We're all gonna die."

"Quinn, these may well be my last moments on this shitty planet. Stop being such a wet blanket and watch me make out with my hot girlfriend."

Brittany hummed in agreement and tugged Santana to her, dipping her low and kissing her thoroughly. Santana whimpered and pressed herself closer to Brittany, sliding her hand under her shirt. Quinn rolled her eyes again.

Finally pulling Santana back up and letting go of her lips, Brittany tucked away a strand of hair and said, "Oh, right, I've got earplugs."

Quinn took the two crumpled earplugs Brittany handed her and scowled.

"Okay, we're almost within hearing range," Santana said. "Britt, go try to steer us to safety. Quinn, let's hope these earplugs are enough to counteract the overwhelming potency of your sexual frustration, huh?"

Quinn scowled harder. "Shouldn't we at least tie ourselves to the mast or something?"

"No time! Q, put in your earplugs! Or be a surly asshole and die, whichever."

They put their earplugs in just in time for an inhuman melody to start reaching their ears.

"It's working!" Santana shouted excitedly. "I feel absolutely no urge to stuff my face full of weird fishperson tongue! Yes! Another victory for lesbian pirates!" She started performing a victory dance, but Quinn was no longer looking at her.

Quinn felt like she was in a dream. A sweet, enthralling, achingly beautiful dream, filled with promises and possibility and a certainty so strong it was strangely comforting. The faint sounds that filtered their way to her ear were pulsing in her veins, making her heart dance and her nerve endings tingle.

Her earplugs were in the way. It was inconceivable to her now that she'd ever want to dampen the powerful, raw beauty of this song. This voice should never be shut out! It should be embraced, openly, in all its horror and its majesty. She plucked out the earplugs and stepped boldly towards the ship's edge.

"Quinn? What are you doing?" Santana yelled and lunged for her, but Quinn was quick and already too far away. "No!"

Quinn stripped off her shirt and threw it carelessly aside. She kicked off her boots. She turned her head to give Santana one last smile, to show her it was all right, she was making the right choice, the only choice that made sense.

And then she jumped.

"Quinn!" she heard Santana scream after her.

She hit the water with a deafening splash, but she was too full with the siren's song to feel the pain. After a brief moment to regain her bearings, she started swimming in the direction of that magnificent voice. The sea was agitated and the waves tireless, but Quinn was a goddamned pirate, so the swim, while utterly exhausting, was not completely impossible.

Finally, panting and shaking and dripping like a drowned puppy, she reached the group of jagged rocks from which the song was emanating. And on the tallest, mossiest, pointiest rock, wearing nothing but seaweed and salt and beads, reclined the siren, a pile of seashells at her feet. She was sitting with her knees far apart and her head tilted back, eyes half closed, playing with a necklace that seemed to be made of pale, sharp fragments of bone. She sang ceaselessly, hauntingly, like sighing, like breathing, like water flowing and blood spilling and flesh rotting into nothing.

She was lovely and fascinating and horrifying in a way that pounded away underneath Quinn's skin, burrowing into her and reeling her in.

Quinn started climbing the rock, slipping on the moss and cutting herself on the edges, the blood making the climb ever more slippery. Eventually, with one last herculean effort, she managed to haul herself onto the top of the rock.

As she kneeled there, huffing and spluttering and spitting salt water, the siren suddenly stopped singing, and slowly, slowly, turned her head to face Quinn. Her dark, dangerous eyes took in Quinn's soaked and shivering form. Her gaze seemed to linger a moment on Quinn's naked breasts, but perhaps it was just Quinn's imagination.

"Oh," said the siren, in a voice as expressionless as it was intoxicating. "You're a woman."

"Yes, I am!" Quinn agreed eagerly. "And I have never in my life loved another woman as deeply and truly as I love you!"

The siren frowned. "Don't worry," she said in her complex and somber voice. "It should wear off in a few minutes, now that you've interrupted my song."

"My love for you is everlasting, my lady," Quinn hurried to reassure her. "It will never fade."

"I have lived for millennia," said the siren. "I've seen loves deeper and truer than you will ever be capable of. They all fade, in the end. And I'd say you have no more than five more minutes before you start screaming, human."

Quinn shook her head fervently. "That's not true! Why would I scream? I am next to my one true love. I couldn't be happier."

"You are under the spell of my song," the siren told her. "But it's only a spell. Nothing true about it."

"The spell of your song?" Quinn repeated. Something was niggling in the back of her mind, but she couldn't reach it through the wonderful fog that filled it.

The siren looked away, her gaze fixed somewhere along the vastness of the sea. "Men always come for my song," she said. "Human men, ugly and graceless and smelling like misery and pork. My song isn't for them, but they always come. So I devour them and wear their bones to remain fashionable. It's a far nobler cause than they deserve."

"Are you going to devour me?" Quinn asked her, excited.

"No," said the siren. "But I won't help you, either. You've arrived at this predicament by your own foolishness. You can find your own way out of it."

"If you don't sing for the men, why do you sing?" Quinn asked.

"I sing for Persephone, my eternal love," the siren replied, a pronounced wistfulness in her voice.

_Oh,_ Quinn thought. Oh.

"Then… why did you stop singing?" she asked her.

The siren looked at her sharply. "Because I want you to _leave_."

"Leave?" Quinn repeated. "But I… I want to stay… forever…"

Without warning, the fog inside Quinn's head abruptly lifted. The overwhelming desire and awe were gone, and the reality of her situation finally sank in: she was sitting in front of a siren. A frothing, ravenous, flesh-eating siren.

A frothing, ravenous, flesh-eating siren that was looking right into her face, with an expression that managed to be inscrutable and contemptuous all at once. "Here we go," she said.

"Fuck!" Quinn shouted. "I can't fucking believe this. Shit! Why the fuck am I _topless_?"

"My guess would be you discarded your shirt in your furious frenzy to reach me," the siren informed her mildly.

"Fucking _fuck_!" Quinn pulled at a group of her hair. "I hate myself."

The siren eyed her with a look that seemed to say, _With good reason_.

"You said you weren't going to eat me, right?"

"Yes."

"Yes? You're not gonna eat me? Okay, that's good. That's very good. That's – wait. Why not?"

"Why not," the siren repeated, voice dripping with disdain. "Do you _want_ me to eat you."

"Of course I don't!" Quinn quickly replied. "But why wouldn't you?"

The siren gazed at her for a while. "I'm sure you are delicious," she said finally.

"I am! I'll have you know my muscles are very well developed, and I'm young and healthy, probably very tender, and – well, fuck," she finally caught herself. "Please don't eat me, I'm probably disgusting. And my bones are so unfashionable, I swear."

The siren looked at her sternly. "Go to sleep, human," she said. "It's dark out, and I'm given to understand that your feeble constitution requires regular prolonged rest periods."

Quinn wanted to protest, but she did in fact feel a bone-deep exhaustion like she hadn't experienced in a long while. Whether it was due to the long swim and climb or the overpowering, invasive magic of the siren's song, she couldn't say. But either way, she just really wanted to lay her head down for a while.

Just as she fell asleep, she heard the siren slip back into song. That night, Quinn's dreams were saturated with yearning, loss, and indescribable wonder.

* * *

When she woke up, for one disoriented moment, Quinn felt the customary urge to grab something and throw it at Santana. Preferably a rotten potato. But then she saw the siren, who was weaving seaweed into her hair, and remembered that she wasn't on the ship anymore, and Santana wasn't here to wake her up in an aggravating fashion. She was on a rock in the middle of the sea with only a carnivorous monster for company. And she also had no potatoes.

"Hello, human," the siren said to her when she noticed she was awake. "You must be feebler than I'd assumed. Your rest period was exceptionally lengthy."

Quinn scowled at her. "I'm hungry."

"Yes, very feeble," the siren said, nodding subtly to herself.

"I'm going to staaaarve…" Quinn whined.

"You won't starve."

"I'm starving!"

"It's been less than a day. Have some dignity, human."

"My name is Quinn!" Quinn cried, sitting upright. "Quinn Fabray! And I. Am. Starving!"

"Then go catch yourself some fish, Quinn Fabray," the siren told her.

Quinn deflated a little. "I can't. I don't know how to fish."

"Aren't you a fisherwoman?"

"No! I'm a _pirate_."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

"_No!_ We board trader ships and rob them pantsless. We do not _fish_."

The siren curled her lip in disgust. "That is despicable."

"Yeah?" Quinn said, raising her eyebrow. "Well, _you_ are a cannibal."

"I am not. I only eat human men," the siren said.

"And we only rob human men," said Quinn.

The siren regarded her silently for long enough to make Quinn squirm. Then, she said, simply, "I see."

Quinn resisted the urge to fidget with her hair and try to cover her bare chest. The siren's gaze was incredibly discomfiting. "Hey, siren," she said, injecting her voice with as much forced confidence as she could manage. "What's your name?"

The siren continued to stare at her. For a moment, Quinn thought she might have detected a trace of regret, or maybe anger, in her face. But then she looked away.

"You can call me Rachel," she said.

"Rachel," Quinn repeated quietly. "Kind of a strange name for a siren, huh?"

Rachel didn't respond. Subtly, she dusted off some of the dried salt that encrusted her skin, and, in an impossibly graceful, fluid motion, she jumped off the steep rock and into the water below as casually and comfortably as a foot into a well-worn sock.

Realizing she'd been staring in wordless admiration, Quinn quickly stumbled to her feet and cupped her hands around her mouth. "Hey!" she called after Rachel, who had already swum several feet away. "Are you just gonna leave me here?" Rachel swam on, showing no signs of having heard her at all. Quinn dropped her arms. More quietly, she added, "Alone?"

* * *

Hours passed, and eventually the sun began to set again. Quinn occupied herself with building castles out of pebbles and halfheartedly gnawing on her arm in hunger, only to conclude that cannibalism just wasn't for her. It was hard, and kind of painful, and didn't seem all that appetizing.

She imagined Rachel picking her teeth with a human finger bone and burping loudly, and couldn't help laughing at the image.

Quinn was lying on her back, wriggling her toes and drawing random shapes on her stomach with her own blood when Rachel suddenly emerged from the water, dragging behind her a string of fish tied with algae.

"What's that?" Quinn grumbled, not bothering to sit up. "Your dinner?"

"No," said Rachel. "It's yours."

Quinn bolted upright at that. "They're for me?"

"Yes," Rachel said.

"Really?"

"Yes," Rachel repeated.

Quinn laughed delightedly, and then she looked at the fish and sniffed.

"Am I… supposed to eat them raw?" she asked Rachel, wrinkling her nose.

"Yes."

"Can't you build me a fire so I can at least roast them a little?"

Rachel grimaced and wrinkled her own nose. "What are you? A savage?"

Quinn pulled a face at her. "Just give it here."

Rachel handed her the string of fish, as well as a glass bottle filled with a clear liquid that turned out to be fresh water.

Quinn bit into one of the fish, chewed and swallowed. It was gamey and smelly, but not really so bad.

"Hey, Rachel," she said, smiling sheepishly. "Thank you."

Rachel nodded and walked away again, hopping deftly from rock to rock.

* * *

"…and that's why I'm never ever eating pickled cabbage again," Quinn concluded her fourth food horror story in a row.

"You are very preoccupied with the consumption of edibles, Quinn Fabray," Rachel observed.

"Thank you, Rachel the man-eating siren," Quinn replied solemnly.

Rachel said nothing for a while, her eerily unwavering gaze fixed on Quinn. Finally, she said, "I once ate a crab as big as you."

Quinn perked up. "Really? What was it like?"

Rachel hummed shortly, but the hint of melody was enough to momentarily sweep Quinn back into a delirious haze.

When she resurfaced she discovered a cold, slimy hand placed lightly on her shoulder. She shivered.

Immediately, Rachel removed her hand and looked away. "The meat was rather tender, but I enjoyed the shell," she said. "It had a… crunch."

"Oh," Quinn said articulately.

"Yes," said Rachel, and got up on her feet. "I will go… elsewhere… now." She climbed down and disappeared behind another rock.

Quinn wanted to call after her, but she couldn't quite manage. All she could think about was that strange slippery hand on her shoulder, and how, oddly enough, its touch wasn't really unpleasant at all.

* * *

Time passed, and no glimpse of Rachel. Quinn took to using the fish bones and pebbles to play tic tac toe, but it wasn't particularly entertaining. She already knew all of her own strategies.

Finally, she spotted a tiny figure in the distance, approaching in her direction. But as it got closer, she realized: that wasn't Rachel. It was a rescue boat.

That this occurrence was actually disappointing to her was a very strange realization to make.

"Quinn!" a familiar voice called to her from the small boat. "Quinn Fabray!"

Squinting, Quinn recognized Kurt's smug face.

"Kurt!" she called back to him. "I can't believe this! What are _you_ doing here?"

He rowed closer and threw her a rope. "Well, apparently I am Kurt Hummel, homosexual for hire. According to your endlessly charming captain, at least." He sniffed. "Anyway, I'm here to rescue you. Come along."

"Wait! I have to say goodbye!"

"What? To whom?"

"To Rachel. Rachel! Where is she?"

"Who is Rachel? Your new pet sea slug?"

"No, she's the si– the, uh, never mind. Um, hold on just a second." She swept an armful of pebbles to her and quickly arranged them in the form of a short message. "Okay. Let's go." She tied the rope to a strong corner of rock and started climbing.

"I brought Blaine with me," Kurt told her. "Don't complain."

"Fantastic. Like I haven't heard enough singing for a lifetime."

"What did I say about complaining," Kurt sing-songed. Probably on purpose. "We _are_ currently in the process of saving your life and all."

"Yeah, yeah. You'd better have some decent food with you."

"We've got Mercedes on cooking duty, what do _you_ think?"

Quinn released a blissful sigh, spared the siren's rock a last glance, and followed Kurt into the rescue boat.

And on the siren's rock, all that was left were some bare fish bones, some dark smudges of Quinn's blood, and a haphazard message spelled in pebbles:

_Rachel,_

_I'll find you._

_Don't stop singing._


	2. Bonus Scenes

**Note:** Two bonus scenes from Rachel's and Quinn's POV respectively.

**Warnings **for scars, violence, mentions of death and cannibalism.

* * *

Rachel waited nine hours before returning to the rock. It was enough time, she'd reasoned, for the human to forget her transgression, considering her species' lacking retentive abilities; but not enough time for her to become hungry and annoying.

She picked up a few seashells along the way, as a peace offering in case the human did remember, or as a pacifier in case she'd somehow managed to become hungry again after all.

_Just don't touch her again,_ she told herself. Touching humans, and human women especially, has never had very positive consequences for her.

She thought about the little yellow human, with her seemingly permanent scowl and her obviously human weapon-inflicted scars and her nasal voice which was unexpectedly rather pleasing, in fact. She was, in some strange, human way, not altogether terrible company.

And, she had to admit, not-altogether-terrible company was a thing she'd been craving for a very long time.

But when Rachel reached the rock, there was no human on it at all; only a message written with pebbles and an abandoned game of tic tac toe.

Reasonably, Rachel completed the game first, stacking three fishbone exes in a row, before turning her attention to the note. Once she'd read it, however, she couldn't help a small smile.

_Don't stop singing,_ she thought sardonically. _As if I have any sort of choice._

* * *

Kurt and co dropped Quinn off at the closest port with an assurance that Brittany and Santana were docked nearby. Quinn saw them off with a promise to meet up with Mercedes for a bar brawl or two next time they cross paths, and a promise to Kurt to pretend they don't know each other next time they do.

Quinn's next priority was to obtain a shirt and a drink, and so naturally she went for a drink first.

She hadn't gotten more than halfway through her second serving when a fist slammed into her back.

"Lucy Quinn fucking Fabray," Santana shouted at her. "I am so fucking mad at you."

Quinn whirled around and immediately threw her arms around Santana, squeezing her hard and inhaling the scent of salt and stale sweat that was unpleasant but wonderfully familiar. "I know you missed me, but there's no need to bruise your knuckles over it," she said once she released her.

"I thought you were fish food," Santana said. "I thought we'd only find your fucking bones."

"Actually, you wouldn't have found the bones," Quinn informed her. "She likes to wear them."

"She? Who the fuck is _she_?" Santana asked.

"Rachel," said Quinn.

"Rachel?"

"Rachel, the siren."

"Rachel," Santana repeated tonelessly. "The siren."

Quinn nodded. "We got acquainted," she explained.

"You got fucking acquainted," Santana muttered, incredulous. "Quinn, we thought you were _dead_."

"Well, thank you for going to the trouble of orchestrating a rescue mission for my bones, then."

"Yeah, you owe me your fucking first born for that one," Santana said vehemently. "Being indebted to Kurt Hummel is a fate worse than death."

"I'll make it up to you," Quinn promised.

"Good," said Santana. "Then come on, Brittany's already aboard. We've just been waiting for your worthless hide."

"About that," Quinn said, clearing her throat. "I was wondering if you have a shirt I could borrow. And some supplies. And a boat?"

"_What_?" Santana yelped. "Listen, Q, don't you dare go off plundering on your own! I fucking raised you! If you're going solo, I want a percentage."

"'I fucking raised you,' really, Santana?" She shoved her lightly. "I'm not going solo. I'm just going on a little detour."

"To do what, exactly?" Santana demanded.

Quinn snorted self-deprecatingly at herself for what she was about to say. Then: "To rescue a siren," she answered.


	3. Chapter 2

**AN: **Being from Rachel's point of view, this chapter's slightly angstier than the last. (Quinn has no angst in this universe. She is a freaking pirate.)

**Warning **for cannibalism, scars, nudity, violence, starvation, murder, parental death.

* * *

It was true that, for the last weeks, if she let her mind sufficiently wander, there was a certain quality to Rachel's song that was… different.

Her song had never been constant, of course. Like the wind, like crystallized salt, like grooves in shells and patterns in sand, her melody must always shift and alter itself to be kept alive. But even accounting for all that and also her moods which were still sometimes unpredictable, it was absolutely undeniable that something in her song had fundamentally changed.

She refused to attribute this change to any one thing or, especially, any_one_. But still, it was also true that, for the last weeks, if she let her mind sufficiently wander, it had a tendency to wander in one very particular direction.

* * *

When she saw the small boat approaching, along with the usual resentment and regret, Rachel felt a tinge of relief. For once, it felt like she could use a distraction. She licked her teeth in anticipation and ran her fingers lightly over the necklace she was likely about to replace.

But then she recognized the yellow head of wild hair, and her song died in her throat. No. It couldn't possibly be –

"My lady, the everlasting light of my life! I have come for you!" Quinn Fabray the human pirate bellowed as she vigorously rowed her pitiful little wooden boat closer. Rachel covered her face with a palm.

Quinn babbled on and on as Rachel dived into the water next to her boat to save her the climb – not out of kindness or any such nonsense, but merely because she had no patience for all that. Then Rachel spent the next several minutes maneuvering around Quinn's boat and splashing water in her face, trying to thwart Quinn's persistent attempts at serenading her.

Finally, her hair and torso already completely soaked, Quinn seemed to recover from her musically induced delirium.

"Aw, shit, it happened again!" she cried, getting up from her position bent on one knee and vigorously shaking her head, sending tiny drops of water flying. "I was going to be so dashing, Rachel," she said mournfully. "So dashing, you wouldn't have believed how dashing I would've been."

"Yes, I'm sure," Rachel said.

"I don't think you should be so sarcastic, as a creature of legend," Quinn told her, sighing.

"I don't think you should be so susceptible to it, as a supposed menace of the sea."

Quinn shrugged. "Well, at least I kept my shirt on this time. Never mind. Come on," she said, offering Rachel her hand and smiling crookedly, half self-assured, half hopeful. "It's time you ditched this rock."

"I can't leave," Rachel told her, frowning. "The sea is my home."

Quinn looked at her as if surprised. "Don't be ridiculous! We're not leaving the _sea_," she said. "I'm a pirate, you know. The sea's my home too."

"We're not leaving? So where are we going?"

"We," said Quinn, and twirled her hand in an impressively ungraceful motion, "are going on a _treasure hunt_."

There was a pause. Quinn looked at her expectantly, waiting for an awed gasp, perhaps. "Oh," Rachel said finally. "How… mundane."

Quinn deflated, dropping her hand and pulling a face. "I spent so much time looking for you, you know. So much time that I could have spent eating smoked eels in some tavern. And I even found us a probably-legitimate treasure map!" She pulled a creased piece of piece out of her waistcoat and flapped it around. "I just thought we could, you know, spend some time together. Plunder a little."

"That was juvenile of you, Quinn Fabray," Rachel informed her mildly. And Quinn seemed so disappointed, so strangely, plainly vulnerable at that, that Rachel had to purse her lips to avoid a smile.

And so with just one last moment of hesitation to savor the forlorn way Quinn managed to scowl, Rachel said, "Let's go on a treasure hunt."

* * *

Once they were both on the boat, however, Quinn didn't seem nearly as certain of herself. She kept halting her rowing, and looking at her tattered piece of parchment, and glancing around, as if trying to see something that she couldn't. After nearly an hour of this, Rachel began to feel irritated. This was even less entertaining than she'd anticipated.

"The problem should be finding the gate," Quinn mumbled to herself.

"Gate?" Rachel demanded. "What gate?"

Quinn looked startled. "Oh… nothing," she said, not even a little convincingly.

"Quinn Fabray," Rachel said in almost her most threatening tone. "Are we really hunting for treasure?"

"Well… kind of," Quinn said guiltily, and showed Rachel the parchment, which was filled with instructions detailing how to reach the realm of the dead. "We're going to find your Persephone."

"My Persephone," Rachel echoed dully, swept for a moment by a wave of longing so powerful it was hard to breathe. "My Persephone is dead."

Quinn shrugged nonchalantly. "I guess she'd have to be, as goddess of the underworld."

"There are no gods," Rachel enunciated slowly.

Quinn snorted. "Yeah, that is completely believable, coming from you."

"There are no gods," Rachel repeated savagely. "There is no underworld. She was human, and she is dead. Your treasure hunt is futile, Quinn Fabray, and it was cruel of you to invite me to it."

She caught a surprisingly distressed look on Quinn's face before turning away and diving easily into the dark waters below. The rush of relief she felt at the comforting familiarity of the sea's embrace was not quite enough to drown out the sound of Quinn's aggravating human voice calling after her, however.

* * *

The human did not leave. She stayed where Rachel had left her, not rowing her fragile little wooden boat a single pace in any direction. Long hours passed, and whenever Rachel would peek at her cautiously from under the water, Quinn would still be there, scratching herself or rearranging her hair or performing sit-ups, the torn pieces of her parchment of spurious instructions scattered carelessly around her.

Rachel watched as she stood and stretched for long minutes, flexible and luxurious; and as she sat on her boat's edge, almost tipping it over, legs dangling in the water up to her calves; and as she lay on her back and chewed stiff strips of salted meat, humming some meaningless tune between swallows.

A day passed, two days, three, and Quinn didn't leave. On the fourth day, when Rachel came to check on her, Quinn wasn't eating. The same happened on the fifth. On the sixth day, she wasn't even picking her nose anymore; she just lay curled on her side in her boat, her empty sack of provisions draped over her like a blanket.

Suppressing her inexplicable concern, Rachel dove back into the deep sea.

* * *

When she reemerged, for the first time in seven days, Rachel approached the foolish human's boat.

She leaned against the frame, causing the boat to rock gently. Quinn didn't stir. "Quinn Fabray," she said out loud and steady, certainly without any trace of worry at all.

And at that the human hummed, and shifted, and turned around to look at Rachel, with shadowed eyes and a quirked eyebrow.

"I knew you'd come back," Quinn told her dazedly, smirking. "Just can't resist a chance to feed me, can you. Like a bird. A mommy bird."

"You're delirious, human," Rachel replied. "A few days without regular meals have rendered you incoherent. Slightly more so than usual, I mean to say."

"A flesh-eating mommy bird," Quinn continued, heedless of the exceedingly clever insult. "Um, I hope you didn't bring me human flesh to eat?"

"Are you really so presumptuous?" Rachel asked her. "Who's to say I've brought you anything at all?"

The arrogant little human simply raised her eyebrow higher at that. Rachel stared at her unhappily for several moments before pulling the net full of shellfish she was holding out of the water and onto Quinn's boat.

"I have two sisters," Rachel said evenly as Quinn crammed her mouth full of mollusks. "I haven't seen them in many centuries. It's… _uncomfortable _for us, hearing each other's songs. It is… a reminder. Of _her_."

"Persephone?" mumbled the human.

Rachel nodded. "We try to stay at least an ocean away from each other at all times," she said. "It makes things… easier."

"Don't you miss them?" Quinn asked through puffed out cheeks.

Rachel flicked her eyes along the sea's surface, taking in its ever-changing form. "Yes," she said simply.

"Can't you stop singing, then?"

"Our song is all we have of her. We cannot stop. We mustn't."

"In my world, music usually has an end," Quinn pointed out.

"Human music is meaningless to me. Empty and fleeting, like all other things that belong to your species."

"But you say your Persephone was human."

"My Per–" Rachel cut herself short. The insolent human's habit of referring to Rachel's lost love as _her Persephone_ was mussing up important knots inside of her. "Persephone was different," she said finally. "And so was I."

Quinn reached out a hand and dipped her fingers in the water, wriggling them leisurely near Rachel's waist as she continued to ceaselessly slurp up shellfish.

"Stop that," Rachel snapped at her. "Before something hungrier than you mistakes your fingers for fresh worms."

Quinn smiled and pulled her hand out of the water, somehow accidentally brushing Rachel's arm in the process.

* * *

"Hey, you wanna see my cutlass?" Quinn asked Rachel once she was comfortably settled on Quinn's boat. Well – as comfortably as a tiny human-made boat could allow, in any case.

"No," Rachel told her.

"No, come on, it's a fucking pirate cutlass, you can't not wanna see my rusty pirate cutlass."

"I do not want to see your human pirate cutlass, Quinn Fabray, mineral oxidation notwithstanding."

She showed her the cutlass anyway. It was impressively uninspiring. Short and worn and slightly curved, not at all distinguishable from any other cutlass. It wasn't even all that rusty.

The human seemed very proud of it, however. "So what do you think?" she asked her excitedly.

"I have seen –" Rachel started.

"Oh, I know," Quinn interrupted her, "you have seen a thousand different blades of a thousand different makes from all the far reaches of the world, and every single one of them has been of superior design and function than my shitty fucking cutlass."

Rachel didn't smile, but she had the unusual feeling that she would have, if she let herself. "That is an accurate assessment, yes."

Quinn snorted and swung her sword around in some twisty human maneuvers, finally rocking the boat enough to lose balance and fall on her ass.

"I'm more used to the movements of a ship," she said, unashamed. "You know, I could teach you how to sword fight, if you want."

"Yes," said Rachel, "your skill with a sword is certainly inspiring."

Quinn ignored her. "What if a big group of sailors come when you sing? What if they're armed? Wouldn't you rather be ready?"

"I don't need a weapon," Rachel told her, "to be dangerous." And then, slowly, deliberately, she smiled, baring all her teeth, each one sharpened to a fine point in two neat rows.

She watched as Quinn's smirk slipped away from her face, replaced with slack-jawed horror, feeling an unwelcome mixture of satisfaction and disappointment.

And then, in something like an explosion, harsh and unstoppable, Quinn burst out laughing. "That's a quality fucking smile," she said breathlessly. "I think I need to find myself a nail file."

Rachel pursed her lips. "Don't be ridiculous, human. You are an omnivore. How are you planning to properly mash vegetation without your molars."

Quinn grimaced at the mention of vegetation. "You know," she said leisurely, "I've kinda been wanting to see you smile."

Rachel trained her eyes on her, saying nothing.

Quinn slowly slipped back into a smirk. "Next time, I'm hoping for a better reason for it than 'intimidate the puny human, win pissing contest by a mile'."

"I do not smile for humans," Rachel told her.

"All right," the aggravating creature easily agreed. "Could you smile in spite of one?"

Rachel stared at her some more. Quinn smiled a surprisingly innocent smile. Rachel would not have suspected her of being capable of innocence.

Finally, she relented. "You must cease talking about your shitty sword," she instructed.

"Got it," Quinn agreed immediately.

"Also food," Rachel continued. "I have no interest in your primitive human cuisine."

At that, Quinn scowled. "You're only saying that because you don't cook. At all. You even eat fish that need to be boiled to neutralize their deadly poison _raw_."

Rachel shook her head subtly. "Your species' continued survival in spite of its overwhelming deficiencies never fails to amaze and horrify me."

* * *

At some point, Quinn just stopped rowing altogether. There was simply no point. The little boat drifted on the gentle waves, Rachel's rock completely out of sight, as well as any other sign of land.

Quinn stretched out her back in the small space, bending her knees and leaning on her elbows. Rachel had to rearrange her legs to avoid tangling them with Quinn's.

"When I was a kid, I used to like to climb rooftops," Quinn told Rachel conversationally. "I grew up in this orphanage, you know, a human house for kids who don't have families, and it had a roof that wasn't very sturdy. Sometimes rain would get through it, and one time a tile just slid right off. But I had very good balance, and, you know, I liked the challenge, and I liked the view. So I'd sit there, looking down on all the other kids who were too sensible to climb our shitty roof, and I'd feel pretty damn good about myself."

"When I was a child, I used to swim," Rachel found herself saying. "And swim and swim and swim."

Quinn quirked her eyebrow at her. "You don't say."

"I would slice through the water and see nothing but bubbles," Rachel continued. "I'd feel my muscles burn, encased in cold water, and salt in my throat, burning like oxygen. I'd dive deep enough to bury my fingers in the sand at the sea's bottom, so deep the sunlight can't reach. When I'd go up to breathe some air without water, I'd be somewhere I'd never been before, but that was fine because all of the sea is familiar. I'd feel it like sweat on my back, me in the sea, and the sea in me."

Quinn looked at her with an odd expression. "You are secretly talkative, aren't you," she said, and she was smirking, but there was something possibly a little bit soft in her voice.

Rachel stared at her silently, and after a few moments Quinn seemed to understand and she yelped, "Wait, don't –"

But the bite of being so predictable didn't counteract the fact that Rachel felt – not scared, not scared at all – and she needed a moment. So she slipped gently out of the boat and didn't listen for Quinn's frustrated groan, but she heard it anyway.

* * *

"This is becoming a fucking pattern," Quinn said when Rachel returned an hour and a half later, holding a couple of lobsters. "I don't like it."

She pretended to refuse to be mollified by the lobsters for almost an entire minute, which was rather impressive, all things considered.

* * *

Eventually an unknown shore became visible in the distance. Quinn occasionally steered the boat towards it, but otherwise persevered in her impressively accurate sloth impression admirably. She taught Rachel how to play a game called "human poker", at which Rachel was easily and consistently winning.

"When I agreed to come with you, I did not imagine we would be playing human paper games, Quinn Fabray," Rachel commented distractedly.

"Why _did_ you?" Quinn asked her, a strange, uneven expression on her face. "Come with me?"

A certain answer wavered on Rachel's tongue, but instead, she countered, "Why did you offer?"

Quinn looked at her for a moment, her lips subtly parted, seemingly deliberating. Then she grinned, and shrugged, and challenged Rachel to a swimming competition, which Rachel naturally won within minutes, and reclined comfortably on the shore, waiting for Quinn to catch up, panting and huffing and cursing in between coughs.

And maybe it was the fact that Quinn Fabray was such a profoundly sore loser, or the way the sand clung to her damp skin, making her appear almost interesting, or maybe it was something in the scowl she directed at Rachel, which was decidedly deliberate – in any case, Rachel experienced an inexcusable moment of carelessness, and grasped four of Quinn's sand-covered fingers, and bent forward, and kissed her.

Quinn's skin was warm and dry, and reeked incessantly of transience, as palpably fleeting and fragile as seaweed. (But Rachel loved seaweed very much, and so maybe it should have come as no surprise that the kiss was fluttering and wild, and intensely filling in a way that her song had only ever been able to barely graze at.) And Quinn sighed and leaned into her, parting her lips and sliding her hand into Rachel's algae-tangled hair, and Rachel could lose herself in the warmth of Quinn's mouth, so tender and pliable and yielding –

Suddenly, Quinn yelped and jerked away, and Rachel tasted blood on her tongue. She looked up sharply to see Quinn poking at her lower lip, which bled from four perfect puncture wounds that Rachel had no doubt matched her teeth exactly.

She'd sprung to her feet and was stepping back into the water in a blink.

"No, shit, Rachel!" Quinn barked and stumbled after her. "Not this time! Not this fucking time!"

But Quinn had no hope of beating Rachel in a swimming contest, of course.

* * *

It was dark out by the time Rachel resurfaced some feet away from Quinn, where she lay sprawled back in her boat with one leg swung over the edge. Rachel watched her for several minutes, but didn't come closer. Eventually, Quinn's eyes cracked open, and she stared back.

"Mmph," was all she said. And then, without moving an inch from her ridiculous position, she started throwing seashells at Rachel.

"Stop that," Rachel commanded, and sank back into the water. Several shells plopped in after her. She dove beneath the boat and reemerged on the other side, close enough this time to give Quinn's leg a push and cause her to lose her balance and tumble to the side.

Quinn quickly collected herself into a marginally more respectable sitting position, and they proceeded to glare at each other silently.

Quinn, naturally, broke first. "You're scared," she stated bluntly. "But that's not extraordinary."

"Mind your arrogance, human," Rachel snapped.

"Nah, how about you mind yours, _siren_," Quinn replied angrily. "'Ah, I've been hurt, so I will never love again' – you think you're the first to think that? It's a very human thought."

Rachel bared her teeth at her. "Why do you care?"

Quinn scowled back. "Oh, because I'm in love with you, Rachel the motherfucking siren," she said.

"You are not," Rachel growled.

"You wanna think that, because my love isn't eternal and won't have eternal consequences? So what? I wouldn't _want_ you to torment yourself with your own fucking voice for all eternity." She threw another shell, which hit Rachel in the chest and bounced into the sea. Quinn seemed to deflate. "If I were immortal, I think, I'd appreciate anything that's temporary."

"Yet you aren't," Rachel told her wistfully, finally looking away. "You aren't. I am."

"Rachel, you are so fucking unhappy, you're spending time with _me_. Fucking _willingly_."

"You might want to consider that you are jeopardizing your own argument, Quinn Fabray."

"Well, but, I mean," Quinn stammered, making an inarticulate gesture with her hand, "as long as you're wasting your time on me, I'd at least like to – at least try to make you happy."

Rachel clutched her necklace of bones and turned her gaze to Quinn again. "I'll tell you a story," she said, making a decision.

Quinn stopped fidgeting, and looked at her, and nodded.

"My sisters and I befriended Persephone almost by accident," Rachel began. "She was a human girl living in the village near the beach where we once stayed to rest. She brought us a basket of some thoroughly unappetizing human bread, and sat with us, and talked to us as if she wasn't at all afraid. After that day, we would return to that beach every spring, to talk to her and play with her and pretend to eat some of her awful bread. It was seven years after that that she first kissed me."

Rachel paused for a brief moment, releasing her grip on the necklace before continuing.

"I was very careful with her. I only sang to her while she was sleeping, when my song couldn't hurt her, couldn't take her will away. She'd said she did not mind. She said that it made her dreams taste like the sea. Like… me." She took a slow breath. "One night, a man came to find me, lured by my voice. You may already know his name."

"Hades," Quinn whispered.

"Yes. He approached me, and at that time, you must understand, I was very young. I did not enjoy the man's attention, but I wasn't ready to kill. So I ran away from him. I left Persephone sleeping on the shore, and I swam away, deep into the sea. I thought that once the melody cleared from his head he would simply leave, and I could go back and find him gone. It seemed easy." Rachel closed her eyes for a brief moment. "I waited for hours, to be safe. And when I returned, the man was indeed gone. And… so was Persephone."

Quinn stared at her, frowning deeply, her hand clutching a shell so tightly its edges bit into her skin. "Rachel," she said, her voice low and breaking, and reached out.

Rachel leaned away, and Quinn retracted her hand. "We found her body some days later," Rachel said quietly. "She's fed many hundreds of generations of seaweed by now."

Quinn didn't laugh at that, which Rachel should've expected. She did not really want her to.

They were silent for some time. Rachel looked at the water, black and infinite and familiar in the darkness. Then something small and hard hit her in the back of the head, and she turned to glare at the insufferable human, whose arm was still cocked back after her throw. At least she seemed to have run out of seashells.

"C'mere," Quinn asked her softly, once again offering her hand, and Rachel finally climbed onto the small boat, allowing the human to wrap her up in her arms and kiss the salt on her cheeks away.

* * *

Quinn boldly pressed her palm to Rachel's stomach. Rachel looked at her, and did the same.

"Are you always so naked?" Quinn asked.

"Are you always so clothed?" Rachel replied.

"Not always," Quinn said, and started undoing the buttons of her waistcoat and unlacing her shirt. Next came the pants and finally the underwear. "Here, now we're even."

Rachel trailed her eyes along the raised scars criss-crossing Quinn's entire body. "You are very thoroughly marked, Quinn Fabray," she said softly.

Quinn smiled. "Aren't they impressive?" she said proudly.

"They are displeasing," Rachel told her.

"No, they're _fearsome_," Quinn insisted.

"A creature that has obviously allowed itself to amass this many injuries doesn't particularly inspire fear."

Quinn ignored her. "I have two more scars than Santana does," she told Rachel happily. "Though she has one on her back that's definitely bigger than any of mine."

"Santana?" Rachel asked.

"My human pirate captain. From my human pirate crew," Quinn explained. "She's very grouchy and dislikes me a lot. You would like her."

"Tell me," Rachel said, "about your crew."

So Quinn told her, stories about hunger and monotony and violence, about weeks at sea with lackluster shoes and barely enough water and no gold at all, about screaming at each other until their throats were swollen and aching and then losing a card game and crying about it, about falling accidentally overboard and being pulled out by two pairs of strong arms and laughing through a mouthful of salt water.

"And then there was that one time Santana got into a fight with this big, huge fucking pirate – I don't even remember why, she probably just insulted Santana's hair – and she just picked up a barrel full of pickled fish, which is really fucking heavy, let me tell you, and she threw it at our ship. We had to sail around with a gaping hole in our upper deck which we couldn't afford to fix at the time. But at least we got a whole barrel of free fish."

"Is that considered an equitable human bargain?" Rachel asked her.

Quinn made a noncommittal noise. "Santana was outraged, but she enjoys being outraged. Brittany and I ate all of the fish together. It could've been worse."

Rachel eyed the unattractive scar stretching from Quinn's navel to the bottom of her ribcage, then the four small puncture marks on her lower lip, and she quite agreed.

* * *

"I will take you for a swim," Rachel announced. "It's only fair, since you taught me how to wield a sword." She had to concentrate rather hard to refrain from smirking.

"Um," Quinn said, looking at her uncertainly.

"Don't worry, I will find your little boat again," Rachel reassured her. "You must hold on tight."

"Okay," Quinn muttered tentatively.

At Rachel's instruction, Quinn wrapped her legs tightly around Rachel's waist and her arms around her chest, her breasts pressing against the skin of Rachel's back. "Take a deep breath," Rachel instructed. "It's my understanding that humans are not well accustomed to breathing underwater."

"Well accustomed?" Quinn squeaked near Rachel's ear, panicked, as Rachel readied for a dive. "We can't breathe underwater at a_aaaaaah_ –"

"Suck it up, human," Rachel advised, but it was already too late; they hit the water with a splash and Quinn tightened her hold, making unattractive gurgling noises and likely swallowing a human lungful of seawater.

It was harder to swim with Quinn's weight hanging off of her like a deceased octopus, limiting her movement, but Rachel was very strong and really kind of magic, and so she still managed to cut through the water at a reasonably enjoyable pace. She could feel her hair whipping behind her, the crushing force of the sea caressing her bare skin.

They passed by a school of surgeonfish, who barely broke formation at the intrusion. Rachel may have been a predator, but she was a very well-liked one. She glanced at Quinn to try to gauge her level of interest, but Quinn's eyes were squeezed very firmly shut.

Rachel poked Quinn in the forehead, trying to get her to open her eyes. Quinn just burrowed her face into Rachel's neck and rubbed it a little. Rachel scowled. The human was surprisingly cowardly, for a pirate.

Oh, well. With one last sharp turn in an effort to frighten the human just a little bit further, Rachel swam upwards so Quinn can have some of her precious human-breathable air.

As soon as they broke through the water's surface, Quinn started coughing and shivering and gasping for air, but she still clung to Rachel with surprising strength.

"You missed all the interesting sights," Rachel told her unhappily. "The uninteresting ones, as well."

"Remind me," Quinn wheezed, her voice scratchy and tremulous, "to never ever _ever _let you _take me for a swim_ ever, ever, ever again."

"That was five _ever_s more than was necessary," Rachel pointed out grumpily. Quinn just continued to tremble violently against her.

She carried Quinn all the way to the boat, but even once back in it, Quinn didn't let go.

* * *

"I need to get back to my crew soon," Quinn murmured unhappily, playing with the tips of Rachel's fingers.

"All right," Rachel replied, and stroked her hair. "I think I can be the one to find you again, this time."

Quinn leaned into the touch, but she was frowning. "When you're with me, you won't be able to sing," she said.

Rachel shook her head. "When I'm with you, I will be able not to sing," she corrected her.

And when Quinn smiled at her, surprisingly liquid and artless, Rachel smiled back, and it didn't quite feel like giving anything up when Quinn laughed a little huskily and traced the contours of the smile with two gentle fingers and pressed a warm human kiss at its corner.

It felt altogether like a fair exchange.


End file.
